


Neglected Space

by subducting



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (maybe), Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Whump, anyway the tardis accidentally fucks up and then helps, doctardis au, how did i forget to tag angst fdhsjsngsdgfn, or maybe you would i dont know your life, probably, the mergeing is complete, there will be comfort eventually, you wouldn't download a timelord
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22271911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subducting/pseuds/subducting
Summary: The Doctor's regeneration is interrupted and the TARDIS can only see one way to save her.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Doctor's TARDIS, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Something goes badly wrong as the doctor regenerates. The TARDIS intervenes.
> 
> [warnings for body-horror this chapter]

> __[Hello](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3ZgPawQoHY)  
>  I watch you come and go  
>  I know you can hear my voice  
>  Don't walk away 

It hurt, and he was scared.

The Doctor felt his flesh reknitting, furnaces lighting across every conceivable part of his body. It hurt until it felt like his nerve endings should’ve been burnt clean, but the pain kept worsening, deepening somehow. Tattered gray curls and deep wrinkles were washed away with the fire and-

Something exploded. Something else, other than the timelord within the console room. The TARDIS itself was burning. As gray became blonde and old became new, the room began to collapse, tongues of flame and sparks exploding around the space as she pitched and lurched through time with a wheezing protest of engines.

Suddenly there was an especially loud crack and the next thing the Doctor knew, a new pain had arrived. The scream that painted the crumbling console room was higher pitched than usual, and hands that were smaller and more delicate wavered uncertainly around…

A piece of the TARDIS. It had come down and gone straight through the regenerating timelord, entering by a shoulder and catching the Doctor like a digger churning through earth. Earth.  _ I’ll never see it again, _ the Doctor thought, as blood and regeneration energy seeped from the front of a now twice-shredded shirt and over the TARDIS’ metalwork.

_ Maybe for the best. _

***

_ A telepathic link full of fire. _

_ Threat… suffering… pain… eject… negative…  _ **_eject…_ ** _ imperative… protect the core... _

_ Every inch of suffering, every second of pain, was burning through her circuits. Too long, too long too long, holding, grasping, something was snapping- _

_ Something snapped and suddenly the fire cut off, the energy stalled. _

_ Regeneration energy was flowing out and away, the transformational power working futilely to knit back together brand new hopelessly ruined flesh, and all the while thirteen lifetimes of memories cried and sighed, voices that never stopped playing across her telepathic circuits slowly failing. Panic, in the form of increased static, a shriek of calculations, a shriek echoed by the Doctor, bleeding out on her floor. _

_ Protect… suffering… protect… restore… save… preserve… preserve…. _

_ Two entities were locked together, both spiralling in slow freefall through space and time. It burned… the Doctor’s mind burned, still full of regeneration and far too much else besides, and holding it in her circuits caused further catastrophes, deep within her, entire floors starting to flicker in and out of existence. _

_ The burning was doing more than charring. It was forging, knitting together, melting and melding two into one. Two minds, both almost spent, flickering on the edge of existence, grasping desperately at one another. _

_ It hurt, and she was scared. _


	2. Where Are We?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something old, something new, something borrowed, something... has landed in Sheffield, in the right place at the right time.

> Come daydream with me
> 
> In closed loops and future-proof cardboard to caviar
> 
> Let's show them how good we are
> 
> If you look after me, I'll look after you

_Not dead._

_  
__Not alive? Unclear,_

_Different. Unusual. She hadn’t had words before. Or… circuitry. One of her had words enough for both, she hummed wryly to herself, and the noise echoed through empty hallways as a soft, whirring croon, a lullaby._

_Awareness came in fits and bursts. One moment she was as she had ever been, timeless but a traveller through it, a heart of fire and an awareness that was beyond comprehension, even her own, suddenly having her experience and awareness compressed in a way she wasn’t used to. The next she was close to sapient, in a panic without words, without limbs, with an unwieldy body that stretched infinitely. She held herself together and realised with a softening of a collective mind that inhabited all corners of the console and the distant reaches of her corridors that she had saved herselves._

_Somewhere, under the newly picked out console room and hidden away behind any evidence of the recent inferno which had since been scrubbed clean, deep, deep within the depths of her circuitry, she knew that there was a problem. But this was better than dying, surely. Better than ceasing to be, better than losing herself._

_Unless that had happened already. She was more and less than the sum of her parts. She was new and afraid and ancient and sad and raw and exhilarated and terrified. Everything was difficult. It was lonely. There was her and only her- no familiar tug of ancient hands on her console, no solid and comforting reply in the form of sparks and odd little noises._

_A signal was nagging in the back of her mind. She could feel it, aeons away, across time and space. She was tuned in, in every way, to that particular spot in time and space. 21st century Earth. Barely realising, her sensors had been straining that way. And she knew what to do, but it was awkward and clumsy somehow. She started to try and manipulate her levers and dials, but an automatic attempt to just_ go _to the signal tripped her up and her engines stalled and shuddered and she lurched awkwardly several millennia sideways. She would be embarrassed if she had company._

_But slowly, the central column started to rise and fall and her console room was bathed with the noise of engines like a cathedral full of song. And she felt herself fly, and it was more terrifying and wonderful than ever before. The time vortex streamed past her and bathed her walls in freedom._

***

“What the _**hell** _is that thing?”

Yasmin Khan was having a really, really weird evening.

Running into old schoolmates in the woods next to massive hunks of painfully cold rock wasn’t exactly the “something more” that she’d been imagining when she pestered her boss for more interesting work, but she couldn’t help feel that someone somewhere was playing a very ironic joke on her. Interesting? Try absolutely baffling with a healthy dose of impossible.

And a slight side of terrifying.

The… whatever it was loomed ominously, a tangle of wires and light that seemed to grow as it moved, although that could’ve been a trick of her eyes. What was she thinking, the entire thing had to be a trick of her eyes.

“I dunno, but I reckon we should stay away from it.”

The old man with Ryan’s nan was doing his best to put himself between her and the undulating sphere of crackling energy, as they all gaped helplessly. It drew itself up and a sparks arced through the air. A flash of pain struck her collarbone and she yelped, jumping as if she’d been stung by a hornet. “The hell-”

To add to the evening’s weirdness, a strange noise seemed to be building. “What now?” whimpered the young man cowering in a train seat, as the noise built. Yaz eyed the sphere warily and took a careful step towards the window, moving slowly. She looked outside and frowned. Something was spinning through the night sky and it appeared to be…

“It’s heading straight for us, everyone down!” shouted Ryan, and a moment later the box smashed through the side of the train and unceremoniously collided with the writhing mass of tendrils, which was very abruptly slammed into the wall of the train. “Nan!” Ryan shouted in a panic, unable to see past the- whatever it was, which was now taking up a large part of what used to be the carriage.

“I’m okay, love,” came Grace’s voice from behind the thing, “Graham too!”

“And me, thanks for asking,” came a disgruntled voice- the sandy haired man who the weird floating thing had seemed to take such an interest in. Speaking of which-

“Is it dead?” Ryan asked, and then, seemingly in a moment of inspiration, he grabbed a bit of twisted metal that used to be part of a seat and raised it cautiously. His heroic pose was somewhat ruined when the tendrils leapt up into the air again, and he let out a noise of alarm, leaping backwards. But it simply whisked away into the night, out through the gap left by whatever had impacted the train.

“At least that’s that gone then,” Yaz said, as Grace (with some difficulty) appeared around the side of the box.

“Now what d’you reckon this is?” she asked briskly, gesturing to the box.

Yaz lifted her phone, shining the torch across the shape. “It’s… an old police box?” she blinked in surprise. “Oh, great!” coughed Graham, who was clambering unceremoniously after his wife, “Can you get in and ask them what the bloody hell’s going on?”

“I don’t want to know what the bloody hell’s going on,” said a third voice, and the scruffy looking man from earlier appeared. “I just wanna get the hell away from this train. It’s a magnet for madness!”

Yaz frowned. This was going to take some explaining, but, well. “I’ll leave you my number, okay? I might have some questions later but call when you’re ready to talk, alright?”

The young man, clinging to his backpack like a lifejacket, nodded. “What was your name?” asked Grace, looking him over in concern, “Are you sure you’ll be alright? We’ve all had a bit of a shock, maybe you should-”

“It’s Karl,” he interrupted, smiling nervously at Yaz as he took the slip of paper she handed him, “A-And I don’t need anything right now except to forget this ever happened. I’ll- I’ll ring you when I’m ready,” he promised to Yaz, wide eyes turned to her again. She nodded and smiled. “Yeah, you know, if there are any more problems, just- let me know, alright?”

As he shuffled off, with Grace watching unhappily, Yaz turned her attention to the police box.

“How does a police box crash into a train?” asked Ryan incredulously, voicing what she was thinking. She shrugged, before remembering who she was supposed to be. “Er, right, um- you guys should probably er- stand back. This… is a crime scene now.” _Probably_ , she added mentally, although only if someone had broken something intentionally.

She reached her hand up, but hesitated, remembering the burning cold of the object from earlier. But this- this just looked like wood. She frowned, straining her ears. She could hear, almost from within, a thrumming noise, like a trembling heartbeat. She let out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding and reached up to press her hand to the blue panels.

It wasn’t burningly cold, like the thing in the woods, but it was cool, and vibrating slightly under her hands. It was trembling as if the train was in motion, but the train was decidedly stopped. The window panels were shining from within and she could’ve sworn the noise she had heard from inside responded to her touch- a different note entered the very faint humming, something that sounded like an impossibly distant voice at the edge of her hearing. She strained to catch it, and in doing so lent forwards on the door panel she was touching.

With a click and a creak, it swung open.

***

_Humans! She would recognise them anywhere- her scanners were already sweeping them, assessing, noticing. She had to restrain herself from reaching out- she wasn’t in control of her telepathic circuits so well just yet, so fried as they were from- from-_

_One of them touched her door and she felt it in ways she hadn’t before. The tactile sensation of warm human fingers on cool wood was stitched together from shared experiences of her two selves, the feeling of fingers and being a physical being and the sensation of having doors, and being able to open them._

_She let them in before she had processed the desire to do so._

_  
_***

“So… we all saw it was the same size outside, right?”

Grace glanced at Ryan, nodding, but her breath was still somewhere in her chest. The… impossible space stuffed inside a police box was a lot to wrap your head around, sure, but more-so was the wonder of the space itself.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed admiringly, as they walked, like the apollo astronauts staggering wonderstruck on the moon. Almost as if in response, the room lit up in more new ways, a warm yellow-pink glow suffusing the space, seeming to emanate from the giant quartz crystals which reached from floor to ceiling. A pleased sounding whistle sounded from the boards surrounding the central pillar, and she smiled.

Yaz had drifted over to the panels and was trailing a finger along them with great interest, dark eyes intent with thought and questions. Grace joined her, a delighted smile dancing across her features. “Look at all of this!” she exclaimed, curious and eager. Graham looked a little more uncomfortable, frowning deeply. “Love, careful you don’t know what any of it does.”

“Come and take a look, then, see if you can figure it out,” she fired back teasingly, eyes dancing. He couldn’t help but smile. He worried, she knew, but she couldn’t let him regret not exploring this, whatever it was.

“This… makes no sense,” Yaz murmured, peering at a screen. It was displaying a series of intersecting and cut out circles that spiralled into one another and floated across the screen like bubbles.

“Where the hell are we?” Ryan wondered aloud, still looking a little stunned. 

“Sheffield,” replied Yaz uncertainly. Ryan looked at her. “Well, we haven’t moved. Unless… we have?”

“Oh, check your GPS!” suggested Graham, and Grace grinned even wider at the excitement in his voice. Ryan pulled his phone out. “It… still says we’re on the train route…” he said uncertainly, “but…. this place is… I mean it can’t be real, right?”

_TARDIS_

  
A voice- she gasped, putting a hand to her head, as the floor suddenly pulled at her knees. “Did… you all hear that?” she breathed, leaning heavily on the console. “Y-yeah,” Ryan muttered, letting his phone drop onto the console. The voice came again.

_Doctor. TARDIS._

It was feminine and unmistakably northern, friendly but urgent and so, so painful. Graham let out a groan of frustration. “We’ve been drugged!” he exclaimed, eyes wide, “We- I aint-”

“Love, calm down.” Grace, recovering from the brain-scrambling message, strode over to him and took his shoulders, looking him seriously in the eye. “We ent been drugged and we ent mad. This is real. I don’t understand it but- look around, love. Can’t you see something big is going on?”

“She’s right,” Grace looked over at Yaz, nodding a silent thanks for the support. The young woman looked a little ill after the… whatever had just happened, and Grace made a note to check them all over in a while. “I- I should… I should report this….”

That was the moment that the doors clicked innocently shut.

“Ah…” Grace winced, then looked apologetically at Yaz (whilst retaining a firm grip on Graham, who was growing increasingly stressed as the conversation progressed). “Doesn’t look like you’re gonna get to just now,” she said, with a thrill of fear but also… curiosity still gnawed at her.

Ryan had made a beeline for the doors, and was trying to get them open, but they looked to be stuck fast. “They wont open!” he said, unnecessarily. “Don’t worry, love,” Grace said in the same calm but forceful tone. “Maybe they swung shut from the outside. Is someone out there?”

“Hello?” Ryan banged on the door with his fist, and the ship made a little noise, a whirring, humming noise that somehow sounded indignant. “I don’t think it likes it,” Grace observed, raising her eyebrows to the honeycombed walls.

“What doesn’t like it?” Graham said, as she stepped back from him to look around.

“Wherever this is… can’t you feel it?”

“I can,” Yaz murmured, voice barely bigger than a whisper. “Since I touched her I felt- like she were… reaching out somehow.”

“How d’you know it’s a her?” Ryan asked curiously, having abandoned the door. 

Yaz frowned, clearly trying to find the words to describe what she was experiencing. Grace knew the feeling- 

“She’s… a ship…” Yaz’s realisation was as she spoke and it painted her voice with reverence and awe as she once again ran her hand along the console.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still feeling out how the Doctardis' POV is gonna read but it'll be a little less abstract than a pure TARDIS POV would be cause obviously there's a hearty helping of timelord in there now. Two hearts in fact, that's how hearty. How on Earth (or anywhere else) is she gonna communicate with them if she can't talk to them?

**Author's Note:**

> I gotta thank picnokinesis for being such an awesome sounding board for this idea and enabling every single one of my hammy instincts, you're a gem! 
> 
> VERY excited about this, this is just to whet your appetite, the story proper will feature the result of these events plus much more!


End file.
